The Government Equalities Office has recommended extending the gender pay gap reporting initiative to include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Currently, only employers with 250 employees or more are required by law to publish their gender pay gap figures on their website and report their pay gap data to the government via its gender pay gap reporting service.

Hilary Spencer, Director of the Government Equalities Office, told the Treasury Select Committee: 'There's a number of ways we could take reporting in the future. One option is to lower the threshold, another option is to ask for more data on gender, and another is to ask for data about different characteristics.

'We're putting advice to ministers on ways we can take this forward, including ethnicity pay gap reporting.'

A range of proposals have been outlined, including expanding the range of data collected and giving the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) additional powers to issue immediate fines to businesses that fail to comply with the reporting requirements.

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